September officially marks the days when millions of students like you are gearing up for another year of hanging out with friends, planning social events, and - of course - hitting the books! If you’re already using Google Chrome, we have a few tips to share about Chrome extensions that will help you make the most out of your academic year. We’ll be featuring some extensions over the next few weeks to help you keep in touch, research and write papers, and generally be more productive.

To kick things off, here are a few Chrome extensions that can help you stay connected with friends at school and those back at home:

With Yoono and AOL Lifestream, you can access many social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube directly from your browser. If you want to share photos from your summer vacation or give your friends a shout out, you can immediately update your status and share links, photos and videos across all or some of your network.

Instant Messaging Notifier lets you chat and receive alerts on many instant messaging services including MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, ICQ and Facebook all in one place. It’s great when you’re studying abroad or away at college and want to keep in touch with friends and family back home. It’s free, and no separate registration is required.

For U.S. students, the Google Voice extension lets you make calls, send SMS, preview your inbox and get notified of new messages in your Google Chrome browser. You can also click on a phone number on any website or in any email to dial right from Gmail or any of your other Google Voice forwarding phones. All you need is a Google Voice account which is available free for anyone in the US.

These are just a few extensions to help you stay connected, and you can find many more by visiting the social networking page in the gallery. If you don’t use Google Chrome, check it out and stay tuned for more posts to learn about other helpful Chrome extensions as you’re getting back into the swing of school.

What's needed is some software companies willing to agree on some super-powers when it comes to the cloud. The Internet has brought on a revolution in the digital age, but with all the garbage that is out there now too... it's just too much. Agree on the majors for the things we use most (Facebook vs MySpace anybody?) and we can cut out the extra crud. Hopefully thin things out and make what's left easier to rely on.